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Digital Advertising Goal Setting 101

September 14, 2018

From a young age we are taught about goal setting and (usually) to have a 5-year plan. The primary reason for this is that, to achieve a goal, it is said that one has to be able to visualize the goal and manifest it in his / her mind over time. More concretely, there are steps that need to be taken to achieve goals and without the goal in mind, the steps to get there would not be clear. Digital Advertising is not different! In order to run an effective digital advertising campaign the first step is to set a clear goal.

Running digital advertising campaigns on the internet is not a straightforward task! Most advertisers have no idea where to begin when planning out a digital strategy. There are countless considerations, including creative size and format, channels of use, cost, targeting, data, and etc! It is very easy to get lost in the weeds of digital strategy and planning.

Why Each Campaign Starts With a Goal

For the aforementioned reasons, advertisers should always begin campaign planning by setting out a clear and concise program goal. In general, the goal will help to better organize the remainder of the campaign planning. Understanding your goal in advance of program execution will also make for much easier benchmarking, optimization and reporting.

What Kinds of Goals Can You Set?

There are a number of different objectives you could have for a digital advertising campaign. Some will correspond with the various stages of the consumer journey but they are not limited to just those, let’s take a look:

Awareness

Consideration

Favorability

Intent

Online sales

In-Store Sales

Branding

Competitive Conquesting

Lead Generation

Attention

Here’s the good stuff!

Goal setting in digital advertising must be a two-pronged exercise. First, you need to consider the goal and then, how you will measure it. If your goal doesn’t match your measurement metric, you won’t be able to optimize or accurately determine the campaign’s effectiveness.

A great tool to use to determine what metric can be used to achieve various goals is the goal and metric matching board. Take a look at the various goals referenced earlier and their complementary KPI or measurement metric:

The Goal and Metric Matching Board for Digital Advertising

Goal

Complimentary KPI

Awareness

Impressions (CPM)

Consideration

Clicks (CTR)

Favorability

Page Interaction

Intent

Shopping Cart View / Lead

Online Sales

Action (CPA)

In-Store Sales

Foot Traffic Study

Branding

Impressions (CPM) / Lift Test

Competitive Conquesting

Share of Attention

Lead Generation

Cost Per Lead (CPL)

Attention

Completed View

So at the outset of any digital campaign you are looking to run, think first about the overarching goal you are trying to achieve with your advertising dollars and then, ensure you are using an appropriate measurement metric to achieve that goal.

This blog post was inspired by our upcoming Attention: The New Currency tour, where we will be speaking at a number of upcoming events. We just completed a study with over 250 marketers to find out just what is the current state of consumer attention to advertising and what are marketers doing to try to get more of it! Stay tuned to find out a major inconsistency between advertiser’s desired goal for video advertising initiatives and the KPI used to measure it by signing up for our blog here!